Car dealers turn toward social media
August 10, 2011 by admin
Filed under Latest Lingerie News
TORRANCE, Calif. —Just a few years ago, John Pohlig might have hung up balloons and perhaps an inflatable gorilla outside this Honda dealership here to attract shoppers.
Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY
John Pohlig, director of marketing for Scott Robinson Honda in Torrance, California, uses Facebook and other social media to try and increase business.
Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY John Pohlig, director of marketing for Scott Robinson Honda in Torrance, California, uses Facebook and other social media to try and increase business.
Instead he’s posting notes on Facebook and other social media sites. The effort is aimed at getting people to comment on what kind of car they’re likely to drive on a vacation — and includes dangling the chance to win a free iPad in return for a “like” endorsement on Facebook.
Four thousand “likes” later, and Scott Robinson Honda has a huge Facebook base. But can Pohlig, the dealer’s marketing director, point to actual car sales from his activities?
“No,” he says. “But we’re building relevance out there. Our objective is to reach as many people as possible. Over the long run, this will help build our business and our company.”
Active Facebook users can’t help but notice that more businesses are creeping into the conversation on the social networking site — and that local car dealers are one of the most aggressive and prominent talkers. Some 41% of dealers now have Facebook pages, according to CNW Research.
Most dealers, however, farm out the social media posting work to others. “Their niche is selling and servicing cars,” says Richard Valenta, founder and CEO of Irvine-based TK Carsites, which provides Internet marketing services for dealers.
Matthew Funk, an aspiring Los Angeles novelist, is one of the TK Carsites writers who pens Facebook notes for dealers and assists them with their strategic plans.
“Auto dealers not on Facebook are missing the boat because that’s where their customers are,” he says. “And that’s where their customers expect them to be.”
Shifting to the Web
Valenta’s firm helps some 40 dealers nationwide with their daily Facebook image, both in penning notes and advising them on social media strategy. TK Carsites’ rates start at $700 monthly for basic Facebook marketing and go all the way up to $8,000 monthly for website design, hosting and marketing services.
Some dealers are more proactive than others. Chuck Capps, one of the owners of Advantage Nissan in Bremerton, Wash., says he spends a few hours daily on social media. Facebook may not be a huge traffic builder for the dealers, but it does help get people to their websites, emerging as a vital marketing tool that for some has replaced the weekend newspaper ad.
Thanks to widgets designed by TK Carsites, Capps can instantly initiate a chat session with a Web shopper, offer directions to the dealership, show videos of cars, and tout discounts and specials.
So much so that some 68% of his business now starts at the website — from customers finding the dealership online, initiating contact and making an appointment to meet.
“People don’t just drop in like they used to,” he says. “Before they visit, they’ve already done their homework, narrowed their choice down to 2 or 3 vehicles, talked to us online about pricing.”
Capps used to spend $25,000 monthly on weekly newspaper, radio and TV advertising. Now he’s only spending money online, with $8,000 monthly to TK Carsites.
At Holmes Honda, in Shreveport, La., e-commerce director Bear Goodman says his Internet sales department has helped generate 30% of the company’s total income.
“People don’t have time to spend all day at the dealership anymore,” he says. “We answer all their questions online before they come in, and get them right out.”
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Email is Still King of the Internet
August 10, 2011 by admin
Filed under Latest Lingerie News
A new report out from Pew Internet says that based on a survey from May, search and email are the top two activities online adults engage in on the web. The number is 92% for both. 59% use dsearch on a typical day. 61% use email on an average day, however.
“Since the Pew Internet Project began measuring adults’ online activities in the last decade, these two behaviors have consistently ranked as the most popular,” says Kristen Purcell for Pew Internet. “Even as early as 2002, more than eight in ten online adults were using search engines, and more than nine in ten online adults were emailing.”
“Email and search form the core of online communication and online information gathering, respectively,” says Purcell. “And they have done so for nearly a decade, even as new platforms, broadband and mobile devices continue to reshape the way Americans use the internet and web. Perhaps the most significant change over that time is that both activities have become more habitual. Today, roughly six in ten online adults engage in each of these activities on a typical day; in 2002, 49% of online adults used email each day, while just 29% used a search engine daily. ”
One very interesting aspect of Pew’s email data is that the people using email most are the youngest demographic surveyed (18-29). This is all the more interesting, considering claims once made by Facebook that email is “probably going away” because of younger generations gravitating more towards texting and social media. Of course that was before Facebook itself began offering email addresses.
“Email is similar to search (and many other online activities) in that the youngest online adults, the college-educated, and those in the highest income categories are more likely than others to engage in the activity,” says Purcell. “These demographic differences are considerably more pronounced when one looks at email use on a typical day. Moreover, while overall email use is comparable across white, African-American and Hispanic online adults, internet use on any given day is not. White online adults are significantly more likely than both African-American and Hispanic online adults to be email users on a typical day (63% v. 48% v. 53%, respectively).”
Social media is certainly growing as an online activity, though that growth has slowed tremendously over the last couple years, as you can see from the top graph. It’s still below buying products online, getting news online, and of course search and email.
However, the lines are getting blurrier among some of these things. People are, for example, getting more of their news through social network sites. Facebook is combining email and social media messaging into one “social inbox”.
It will also be interesting to see the impact Google+ has on Internet culture. While still in its very early days, it has been growing rather quickly, and the more people that use it, the more people will have access to Gmail, by simply having a Google account. How much they use it in relation to Google+ circles and streams remains to be seen.
For now, however, it looks like email is still king of the hill when it comes to online communication. That says a lot about the value of effective email marketing.