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Social media is one of the best ways to connect with potential customers and keep existing customers engaged with your business.
Unlike most other marketing channels, you can create and post organic content completely free of charge – all you have to do is set up an account. In addition, you can disseminate the same content across multiple platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn.
Why Use Social Media?
There are a range of different reasons that you should be using some form of social media marketing within your dealership.
- It’s where your customers are
- Increase the visibility of your brand
- Engage with relevant people
- Generate leads
According to Statistica, the number of worldwide users on social media is projected to hit 3.02 billion active users per month by 2021. That’s a third of the entire population on Earth. If you’ve not got a social media presence, potential customers will be engaging with competitors that are popping up on their news feeds and timelines.
Because there are so many people using various social media platforms, any form of engagement with your posts or account in general provides additional exposure for your business. Make it easier for anyone searching for your business to find information about your dealership wherever they’re looking – younger generations use the internet very differently to Gen X and Baby Boomers.
Social media isn’t always about posting original content. You can join relevant groups and follow other pages to interact with people and add value to discussions where you have expertise. By actively seeking queries that you can answer, you will start providing value to a community of people.
After building up a relevant following, ultimately, your social media profiles should start generating leads for your business. If you’re willing to put some money into social media marketing, it can pay dividends with targeted campaigns likely to result in sales.
How To Use Social Media
It’s important to start with a plan: what message do you want to send to your audience and what are you hoping to achieve?
Car dealer social media is becoming saturated with ads and businesses trying to sell to a vast amount of people. Generally, this now results in very low reach and even lower levels of engagement.
Over the past few years, it has become increasingly apparent that people are more receptive to video posts. In fact, social media algorithms have now changed in favour of video content over other content forms such as text and image.
With these points in mind, social media is a fantastic place to give people an insight into what it’s like behind the scenes of your business. People are often fascinated by the unknown, even if it’s something as everyday as the processing of new inventory.
What About The Negative Comments On Social Media?
If you’re going to put your business out in the open spaces of social media, it’s highly likely that unhappy and disgruntled customers will write negative comments on your posts.
There are a number of ways that you can deal with this:
- Hide the comment– most social media platforms give you the power to hide any comments you don’t want other users to see.
- Block the user from posting– if you have someone that consistently writes negative comments, you can block them from being able to access your posts.
- Respond to the comments– a negative comment is often a good opportunity to confront the user. Most of the time they don’t want a solution, they just want a platform to express their discontent. By addressing their problem and providing them with a channel to resolve their issue, your brand comes across as a proactive business that cares about their customers.
Although you can’t control what people write, receiving negative feedback highlights an area of the business that needs to be improved.
The potential to receive negative comments is not a good enough reason to disregard social media, especially considering the many benefits it offers.
If you’re not embracing social media and giving your dealership a wider digital presence, you will be left behind and overtaken by more proactive competitors.
