Have you been searching for a social media marketing company? One of the most frustrating aspects of trying to find an automotive social media company to manage a car dealer’s social media is that most social media companies don’t understand the world of automotive retail. You’ll hear nonsense like, “It’s your job to manage your social media. No one knows your business like you do!” Then you’re supposed to pay the social media company and hire someone to work at your dealership to play on social media websites all day! And of course, the rest of your staff will just love that person who ends up working 9-5, Monday-Friday. What happens? People resent the social media guru you hired; you’re paying FICA, FUDA, SUDA, benefits AND a social media marketing firm on top of it! Sound familiar? Or perhaps you’ve heard stories like this and have been reluctant to throw your hat in the ring. Fear not! There is a better way!

Automotive Social Media Marketing – A Harsh Reality

First things first: In order to be successful with automotive social media marketing you must understand a very important principle and its probably something you’ve already thought – NO ONE WANTS TO BE A CAR DEALERS FRIEND ON SOCIAL MEDIA WEBSITES! Probably seems strange that a social media marketing firm for car dealers would make such an assertion, but its the truth.

Now that doesn’t mean social media marketing can’t be successful for car dealers, but the approach and style is much different than the typical social media marketing campaign. The main reason for this is that the merchandising cycle for car dealers is very different than other retail verticals.

Let’s face it, its a lot easier to promote something people buy every day like a latte at Starbucks. But car dealer’s customers see them every 3 months (for service) and every 3 years (on average for sales). And whats worse, consumer loyalty is at an all time low. So how can an automotive social media campaign be a solution to this reality?

A Refreshing Approach to Social Media Marketing for Car Dealers

After spending 20 years in automotive retail, Wikimotive’s founder, Timothy Martell, applied a simple truth to Wikimotive’s online marketing initiatives – the car business is a numbers game. The more people know you, the more people visit you, the more people take a demo drive, the more people get a TO, the more people buy – it’s that simple.

For this reason, successful social media marketing is a perfect compliment to the car business because success in social media marketing is by definition a numbers game! Unfortunately a lot of self proclaimed social media experts actually assert that its not about how many likes or followers you have. This is absurd nonsense and if someone representing a social media firm says this to you, throw them out. Remember, generally when someone tells you to ignore something or dismisses your belief of its importance it is because they are either ignorant or incompetent as it regards a solution to the problem. And that’s just it! Most social media marketing companies don’t know how to build an audience!

Wikimotive specializes in building huge social media fan bases for our clients to market to. Our Fan Acquisition Service literally guarantee’s your success building an audience on the most important social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus. We also offer services for other platforms like YouTube and P’interest, but we generally recommend focusing on the “Big 3″ first and then adding other components as ROI is obtained through the other successful marketing initiatives we suggest at the outset.

I already know what you’re thinking, “What’s the catch?” Right? We must be bribing these people after all we just told you that no one wants to be your friend on social media sites. Please believe, we will NEVER use any shady marketing tactics like promising a chance to win an iPod or use fake accounts to inflate the following of a social media page. So how do we do it?

We create a simple value proposition for your dealership. Simple, effective display ads. Not unlike a Facebook advertisement or a banner ad you might see on the google content network. So why don’t we put them on Facebook and Google? TOO EXPENSIVE! There are content networks out there that are really inexpensive and some that are even free. Why doesn’t everyone use them? Well a lot of people do, but many marketing firms don’t know about them. Also, admittedly the quality of these sites is very different than say seeing an ad on Boston.com or ESPN.com.

But remember we were talking about numbers games, right? So the quality is a little lower, but its a lot less expensive, that simply means we need to show the ads to a lot more people to get them to like you. We found the formula to success for that approach. We know how many people need to see an ad to like your page or follow your profile. So we put these ads in front of hundreds of thousands sometimes even millions of eyes in order to get the desired audience.

We also set up a scenario that easily allows those people who decide to like your page to share it with all of their friends. And thats it!

Managing the actual social media campaign is also very different for car dealers. Half off a Starbucks latte is great when only available to their Facebook fans, but no one cares about a $500 coupon for a used car when they won’t even be in the market for 2 more years. In short, promotional material should be kept to a minimum and on some social networks avoided entirely.

Studies show that only 2% of the market are actually shopping for a car at any given time. That means 98% of the market doesn’t care about your sales promotion! And let’s be frank, we don’t need social media for going after the 2%. There are countless other methods for marketing to people who want to buy today. That’s what strategies like automotive seo are for.

Automotive social media marketing is about reaching the 98% of non-intenders and building more than just a brand awareness; its about building a relationship; changing the perception in the prospective consumer’s mind that you are brand and bringing a human element. We do this by relating interesting, fun and sometimes even controversial content. Things that people like to discover when surfing social media websites. By creating discussion about these topics of interest and by providing fun and interesting information, your fan base will want to return again and again to share their opinions and interact with other fans and followers.

The result is a consistent exposure to your brand, and an association that dealings with your brand are both fun and interesting. In short, our automotive social media marketing strategy combines creating a massive audience numbering in the hundreds of thousands and providing that audience with content that is fun to share and interact with, thus creating a positive relationship in their mind that is then associated with your brand. In short, we strive to create customers for life.