Sell your brand, Sell your experience. But don’t sell your merchandise

I lead a social media team for an automotive group so I know social media from a retail marketing perspective. And I’ve created something good there.  I’m interested in being involved in social form an agency angle so decided to broaden my experiences. I’m passionate about digital marketing and social relationship management, and not looking to lose touch with social.  I am assuming a position more tightly honed than ever on digital marketing and reporting.

I left my last digital marketing position inside a dealer-group after my mother died for much needed change and hopes of professional/career development.  But in terms of my last job, what I miss most after the people I worked with is the  interaction with people over our brand social network. In my three years leading social for an automotive dealer-group, I have learned some things.  Here’s how I was involved in social alongside some lessons I’ve learned:

My past duties related to social:

1. Lead weekly social media team discussion to identify and implement ways to grow social visibility of brand and increase customer density of social audience
2. Foster customer engagement using a mix of low cost/ high impact content, relevant to both customer and business.
3. Monitor and measure the effectiveness of social strategies over Facebook and Twitter.  For weekly contests, I would measure simple Return on Social Spend (Customer Sales Value / Social Costs)

I advocated for less direct car sales promotion over social because social is not the proper channel.  Social is best for extending our brand relation with customers and prospects beyond the sale, beyond the dealership, beyond business.  Think of social as the delicate threads in the fabric customer trust and relevancy.  We learned the hard way that it is best to be careful by keep sales off social.  Social is full of enough noise and irrelevance after all.  Why add to the pile?

The best tools in the toolbox were those which helped us pursue local market engagement. We would often pose questions, host trivia and contests with giveaways, publish branded but engaging (i.e. entertaining/ controversial/ fun) videos and photos, offer incentives and promotions on service and automotive detailing. We sought a balanced approach towards meeting diverse brand audience content expectations by mashing repetition with surprise which helped keep our brand presence on social media interesting. You need a fresh supply of engaging content else your pool will quickly run dry. We did very little direct car sales promotion over social because social is best reserved for extending the brand relation with customers beyond the sale, beyond the dealership.

Sell your brand. Sell your experience. But don’t sell your merchandise.

Social is like a delicate thread woven into the fabric of trust and relevance belonging to your brand network. We have learned that it is best to be careful by keeping sales off social less become irrelevant. For smaller brands, selling merchandise over social can jeopardize the “top of mind” placement of brand as audiences can quickly “turned-off” by the sales message. Many people within a brand network can quickly find the sales message impertinent to their daily lives than the “person-to-person”, “brand-to-person” or ”person-to-brand” dialogue that had drawn them onto social in the first place.

Know thyself.

Automotive vehicle ownership is so widespread that cars have become just another commodity that a sales message in this vertical is noise to the consumer.

A dealership’s social audience is a diverse mix. As the dealer-group social/digital thought leader, we tried to present a diversified social strategy that would broaden our social visibility inside our market vertical.  This allowed us to reach both customers and prospects with engaging content, allowing us to gain better traction, then build momentum and grow audience engagement over time.  Our approach was holistic and took time.   After all, it’s a challenge to engage a diversified mix of customer/audience groups, especially when they don’t want to be sold over social.  The lack of promise for sales over social can cause a lack of executive management buy-in. However brand managers should not despair, social is a good channel for reinforcing “top of mind” brand placement in the market.

We found our best success by simply being different from other dealerships in the market, by not being a “car dealers” and aligning our business needs with our audience needs on social to keep top of mind. People don’t want to be sold cars over social.

In the automotive market-space, social is excellent channel for customer retention, especially when used in conjunction with CRM because social then can be made most effective for targeting and rewarding your most valuable customers in terms of revenue and Klout.  These happen to be your biggest brand advocates.