For car dealers, Facebook draws fans, but not sales

Who “likes” a car dealership on Facebook?

Well, 415 people do, according to Millevoi Bros. Auto Sales Service’s fan page.

Mark Millevoi, the owner of the dealership in Northeast Philadelphia, joined the 750-million-member social media site in hopes that it would help sales. So far, Millevoi is disappointed.

“I’m very unhappy with Facebook,” Millevoi repeated – for the fourth time. He sold 400 to 500 cars in 2010, but only one through Facebook.

Millevoi constructed the fan page in January 2010 and slowly gathered a legion of 415 fans composed of relatives, friends, friends of friends, customers, and strangers. The page is visible to the public and contains links and photos to cars in his inventory. The links connect to his dealership website, which contains additional photos and information on prices, mileage, transmissions, etc.

The dealership fan page got 400 to 600 impressions a month, Millevoi said. Whether anyone paid real attention is another matter.

“I wouldn’t get questions from anybody,” Millevoi said. Except for one or two people who “liked” each update, there was no interaction between the dealer and his fans.

Frustrated, Millevoi changed strategies in March. Now he just posts inventory updates on his personal “Mark Millevoi” Facebook page, where he has 267 friends.

He gets more questions and comments, but still not nearly as many as he would like. The change has not been any kind of difference-maker for him and his business.

CNW Marketing Research Inc. estimates that 43 percent of U.S. car dealers were using Facebook as of 2010. But, car dealers are reevaluating the worth of Facebook, said John Giamalvo, director of dealer sales at Edmunds.com, an online car-finder.

He said there are four tiers of dealers using Facebook. The first tier are dealers who put up a Facebook page because they’ve heard that they need to be on Facebook. Yet, they do not update or monitor the page. Thus, when a customer contacts them through Facebook, they do not respond, therefore Facebook is hurting them rather than helping.

The second tier garners fans to improve their search results on Google. The third tier adds promotions and uses Facebook like a mass-marketing tool, similar to a TV-advertising spot. The fourth tier also tries to make its sales team expand the dealership name through having its own personal pages, hoping to expand name recognition beyond the dealership page.

So far, Facebook has been poor in improving sales.

“I think it’s something that’s going to take longevity. The people in the last tier are the ones that are going to reap those rewards,” Giamalvo said.

Facebook is called a social-media site for a reason, said John Curtis, senior social media and search-engine optimization strategist at L2T Media, which advises car dealers on using social media effectively. People go on Facebook to connect with their friends, not to buy cars, so selling cars on Facebook will not be as easy as selling on Craigslist or eBay, Curtis said.

Facebook helps a dealer build trust with potential customers, Curtis said. The first step is to use Facebook to provide value to the masses, meaning inventory updates are not enough. A person may buy a car every couple of years, but they get an oil change every couple of months, so dealerships should provide service coupons to their fans.

More people will “like” a fan page just for those coupons, and if they use it and are satisfied with the service, the dealer just moved “a couple levels up in the trust ladder,” Curtis said. When one of those folks is looking to buy a car, he will remember the dealership that gave him a discount on an oil change.

Facebook also allows businesses to listen in on conversations about their own business, Curtis said. When a dealer finds a relevant conversation, he should join in, Curtis said. A car dealer should offer his expertise, give advice on buying cars, do something to provide value to the conversation. A dealer should also create conversations with his fans by posting articles about cars, asking questions, and conducting polls.

Stephen Wade Nissan, one of nine Utah car dealerships owned by Stephen Wade, chairman of the National Automobile Dealers Association, tells a different Facebook story.

Two-and-a-half years ago, the Nissan dealership started a Facebook page that yielded no results. But two months ago, the Nissan outlet began an aggressive Facebook campaign. Since then, fans grew from 170 to 579 as of late last month.

A professional ad company constructed some features on the page, but, “The big difference comes when you get everybody in the dealership involved,” said Matt Muir, Internet sales director of Stephen Wade Automotive Group. Multiple people in the dealership have access to the Facebook account so that they can respond to questions and give quotes as soon as possible.

Last month, the number of fans grew by 279 in five days. The cause: A sweepstakes contest posted on its wall that said if the number of fans exceeds 500, the dealership group will give one fan a GPS system. If fans top 750, then he’d give some fan a Kindle, and if the count climbs above 1,200, a $300 gas card would be awarded to a fan.

The “Stephen Wade Nissan” Facebook page includes digital brochures, quick quotes, inventory, photos of its employees, free car washes, links to its blog, and newspaper articles about cars.

According to Muir, it is too early to have concrete data linking Facebook to car sales in the Nissan dealership, but Facebook has definitely generated more traffic, and sales associates have been getting more calls.

“It’s a noticeable difference when you walk from store to store,” Muir said. The Nissan dealership “is upbeat and friendly.”

 

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Contact staff writer Jingwen Hu at 215-854-2625 or jhu@philly.com.

 

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India Inc looks beyond Facebook, Twitter

India Inc now has its own Facebook or Twitter, minus the personal diaries. New friends are made and colleagues ‘followed’, but business always comes first as employees connect within corporate firewalls, reports Shelley Singh

Business process outsourcing guru Pramod Bhasin is an avid advocate of networking. And who would know better how to do it. He expanded Genpact from one customer to more than 400 and built the country’s largest business services company.

The networking he talks about is in no way related to the popular social hangout zones -LinkedIN or Facebook – but a host of business networking software that companies are now downloading from the cloud or installing on corporate servers. India Inc is staying in the loop, using social networks imaginatively named Yammer, Jive, Socialcast, Quad, Connections, Chatter, SociatText and more.

“Social networking can be the killer application in corporate strategy, but not the way people do on Facebook, Twitter or the like,” adds Bhasin, vice chairman (non-executive ), Genpact. He believes it’s a must-have tool to encourage teamwork and best practices. Bhasin did log on to Facebook and within a week, got off it. “I was inundated with friend requests. I didn’t want to know what people had for lunch. It was too much to digest!”

Corporate social networking has added pizzazz to the intranet, without diluting the seriousness of connecting online. If there are friends to be followed or images to be uploaded, there is also information on best practices and innovations that can be shared. Companies organised into separate regional, productline and functional ‘silos’ see social networking as the tool that’s “bringing together manufacturing and marketing,” as Manish Choksi, chief of corporate strategy CIO, Asian Paints puts it. “Now both are on the same page,” he adds.

Genpact is doing a toss-up between Yammer and Jive, while Asian Paints and Federal Bank recently got started on IBM’s Connections. Bajaj Auto Finance, Mahindra Mahindra, Wipro Technologies and a host of others have started off with business social software to help employees ‘follow’ colleagues beyond their cubicles.

Cisco is piloting Quad, launched in India two months ago, at one of the largest public sector banks in the country. Ffreedom, a two-and-a-half year old wealth management company, works out of Chatter, a business social network tool from salesforce.com.

Less than half of its 48 employees come to ‘office’. “We have a mobile application of Chatter. The office is ‘on our hands’ and we track people and work on the cloud,” says CEO, Sumeet Vaid. For the Mumbai-based start-up, it also means saving on expensive real estate.

Such a buzz within corporate firewalls may lack the bells and whistles that social networking darlings Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIN offer, yet are the new face of business networking. If global trends are any indicator, India Inc too will soon be Yamming, Chattering or Jiving away.

A 2010 report from Morgan Stanley says, there are increasingly more social networking users than e-mail users. According to technology research firm Gartner, by 2014, social networking services will replace e-mail as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for at least 20% of business users.

The research firm expects spending on social software to support sales, marketing and customer service processes will exceed $1 billion worldwide by 2012. Computer networking company Cisco Systems claims a 100 people team of specialists can now do the work of 120, by merely tapping resources within the company. That, in salaries, overheads and so on, translates to a saving of $5 million a year.

From Consumers to business
In the larger consumer community, though, the reach of social networking sites is unparalleled. Facebook, with 750 million users (25 million in India), is the largest. LinkedIN, a professional networking site with 100 million users (10 m in India) is the biggest in its niche.

But public networks are not where companies want their employees to put out office work on, share office gossip or comment on client engagements. “It’s hard to justify you are working on Facebook,” says Jessie Paul, CEO of marketing consultancy Paul Writer.

Yet, companies want to give employees everything that social networks offer: have fun, follow friends, upload images or scout for subject matter experts.

That’s where business social networks fill the gaps. “What Facebook is to personal life, Chatter is to business life,” says Sarah Patterson, product manager, SMB segments, Salesforce.com, a $1.6-billion provider of customer relationship management software. Salesforce.com launched Chatter in June 2010.

Chatter and the band of business networking tools have also to thank corporate policies for their popularity. Most companies bar employees from using public social networks during office time.

For example, Genpact bars access to public networks in office hours, citing security and customer concerns. Says Sanjay Shelvankar, CEO, ScaleneWorks People Solutions, “Most tier-1 companies block sites. RD outfits even block chats.

Employees can’t log in at office time.” Shelvankar started ScaleneWorks, an HR consulting firm after quitting MindTree in 2010, where he headed the HR function.

Serious networking
There are three distinct eras in corporate networking – e-mail, instant messaging and now social networking, says Minhaj Zia, national sales manager, Unified Communications, Cisco, India Saarc.

“Each tool has led to greater collaboration. With social networking the whole company is on the same page at the same time,” he says. He advocates any company with 1,000 or more employees must have a business social networking tool. “It brings collaboration among people not sitting next to each other,” adds Sanjay Manchanda, director, Microsoft business division.

Take the case of $2-billion Novozymes, a Denmark headquartered biotech company with 5,400 people in 30 countries including India, at Bangalore. Frank Hatzack, innovation manager at Copenhagen, who was exploring a new idea for food and seed industry, was seeking information on a particular enzyme (a kind of catalyst). He posted his requirement for details on Yammer, seen by all employees.

Arnab Guha, from the company’s RD lab in Bangalore had read about food and seed enzymes, and shared the information with Hatzack. Now he has leads to explore the potential of the project. Without social media, Hatzack wouldn’t have known which ‘expert’ to reach out to within the company. Instead of shooting in the dark he got on Yammer to complete the task.

Last week, communications solutions provider Polycom’s engineer in Sydney, Australia posted a query on Yammer on how to integrate Polycom systems with those from other vendors. Within minutes, he got a dozen replies from colleagues around the world including India to fix the integration challenge. At Asian Paints, the annual budget planning exercise now happens on social media.

IT planning takes about three months and now, the 60-people technology team meets on its social media, IBM Connections. Says Choksi, “Earlier we were doing it on e-mails. The cumbersome inbox filling has been replaced by social media.” Choksi anticipates the tool will speed up work and help employees access knowledge from within, through greater collaboration. Genpact sees the potential of social media unfold in accessing subject matter experts across the company in banking and insurance.

“The gains are greater collaboration and less duplication,” adds Gitanjali Puri, director, marketing, CSC India. CSC uses a Jive-based platform, branded 3C – Connect Communicate Collaborate.

About 85% of the technology services company’s 91,000 employees (20,000 in India) use 3C. Prior to this, e-mail was the mode of communication. Over the past one year that it has been in use, CSC has seen a 20% reduction in e-mail and time to respond to a ‘request for proposal’ is down from an average of 45 days to 30. “That’s because business teams are collaborating in real time,” Puri adds.

Telecom-focused technology services company Aricent sees Yammer assist in “crowd sourcing of knowledge.” Says CEO Sudip Nandy, “If an engineer is stuck on an issue he can discuss the problem on Yammer with 8,000 connected minds.” At present, Aricent employees on Yammer are discussing whether they should embrace cloud for its enterprise applications.

Besides, social networking is bringing employees from diverse cultures and countries closer. At the $21-billion Xerox Corporation, such benefits are already real. A Yammer post asking people from non-English speaking countries to share where they work and the language they speak got response from 40 countries, where it operates.

Says Renee Heiser, director, corporate and employee communications, Xerox, “that one conversation connected employees within and across those countries and languages.” This was apart from sharing notes on Lean Six Sigma, customer service and healthy living habits.

Goodbye to intranet
Critics argue much of such collaboration was already in place through corporate intranets. It’s just that social networking is the flavour of the season. Employees have woken up to the idea of ‘following’ colleagues, much like they follow friends on Facebook. And now the platform looks jazzy, compared with the staid corporate intranet.

“Intranet is like black white TV compared with where we are now,” says Salesforce.com’s Patterson. Where business social networks differ from corporate intranets is the ability to follow colleagues and know what’s happening on a real-time basis. Nandy of Aricent points to social software’s ability to follow people, form groups and communities, which intranets lack.

He says, “On Yammer, we have photography enthusiasts to adventure seekers, from robot fans to coders – a mix of discussions taking place. About a tenth of the talk is on lighter topics, the rest is work-related.” Saatchi Saatchi has done away with corporate intranet, now replaced with Chatter. At CSC, intranet has been merged with Jive.

At Federal Bank, its chief blogs on IBM Connections, more than he uses the intranet. Ffreedom’s CEO Vaid sees social software as an “e-mail killer” besides impacting intranet.

Business social software appeals to companies as it mirrors what public networks offer. Minus the headaches of having employees share office secrets in public. Much of the openness within firewalls, though, depends on how senior managements view the shift.

Choksi of Asian Paints says, “Everyone can be on the same page but you need senior management to evangelise networking.” Nandy sees business social networking driven “transparency and accountability will create better leaders.” All ears are now on company chatter!

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