Blogs | Up Your Ups

Social Media Works! Think Integration.

September 30th, 2011 -

The discussion taking place regarding social media is fascinating. It’s a very predictable conversation as a business jumps into this new exciting media channel.

It goes something like this.

“WE HAVE TO GET INTO SOCIAL MEDIA!”

“I agree we can’t be left behind and it might be a silver bullet!”

“HOW DO WE DO IT?”

“I have a friend who’s into social media or we can use our internet guy.. he’s a wizard on Facebook. Let’s get one of them to set it up and run it.”

“HAVE WE SOLD ANYTHING?”

“No not yet. I’ve been posting deals of the week and nothing sold. But, I haven’t looked at it in a few days.”

“HOW COME WE ONLY HAVE A FEW LIKES?”

“I don’t know. I told you this was a waste of time!”

This scenario has taken place thousands of times. All you have to do is look and you’ll see Facebook skeletons littering the internet. All the sights look the same, very few likes and no post for months.

Here’s the problem! Narrow thinking and a lack of social media knowledge. It’s not the media! It’s the driver. It’s a new media AND very few people understand how to make it work.

HERE ARE SOME TIPS

1) Review your social media platform.

You must have a blog but it shouldn’t appear to be a sales site.
It needs to have key search words in the title, text and photo’s. Match the key terms you ‘re using for Google Adwords. (If you’re not using Google Adwords call me right away!) You need to post 3 blogs per week.

2) Integrate your blog into digital and traditional media!

The blog gives you great content every month for an e-newsletter. Put 4 blogs into the newsletter and send it out. Add fixed ops offers and encourage them to engage your social pages.
Each blog you publish enhances your Organic search rankings. You’re becoming more relevant!
The blog gives you editorial content to run in local newsletters for churches and other local organizations, community newspapers, and internet sites. Everyone needs free content!

3) Integrate Social Media into your sponsorships!

Don’t sponsor one more event or organization without creating a social media event out of it.
For the first time you can actually get value out of every donation you make. In fact you’ll see returns you never thought possible. When one of these opportutinites goes viral look out. The added exposure of TV, radio or newspaper exposure can be significant.

4) Integrate Social Media into your media negotiations.

Social Media should be apart of every media negotiation you do in the future. Look for opportunities to tap into the media’s social networks. Ask how do we create a dynamic social program with this promotion. If you really want some added value out of your next media buy include social media.

OK… Social Media WORKS! The problem is the discussion is usually centered around the wrong topics.

You shouldn’t be asking is it working. You should be asking…..

”How do I Integrate Social Media into everything we do?”

Last thought>>> Stop thinking of Social Media as a stand alone media. It’s a critical communication channel for your customers. Make it a big part of yours. Integrate!

Marketing Guru’s… I Bet You’re Not Here Yet!

November 12th, 2010 -

Integrated marketing is here! And it’s more powerful than you can imagine.

Talk about a competitive advantage!

If you want to know what it looks and feels like watch this video from Social.Motive.

Traditional Advertising + Digital Advertising + Social Media

Hold ON!

If you’d like more thoughts on how to make integrated marketing work just drop me a note. It will be interesting to see how many Automotive Ad Agencies can connect with this new world.

How To Have Your Automotive Ad Agency Achieve Some Terrific ROI

September 6th, 2010 -

One of my basic rules for social media:

Inject social media into traditional advertising.

Although digital marketing might not be as old as television and radio it gives you a great opportunity to reach out to your customers. Creating a newsletter using your Blog content will connect with your database.

These three examples are taken from a Social.Motive sldie show. They demonstrate regardless the size of your database you can expect some great results. Each of these newsletters would cost $500 to $ 1,000 if created from scratch. In a good social media program they are just an added benefit.

Open rate in these three examples ranged from 18% to 32%. You really should be doing this once a month if you want to effectively own your customers and grow your market share. This is great ROI!

If your Automotive Ad Agency or staff is not prepared to execute give us a call. We put in the game in a very short order.

The Key To Social Media Is The Blog… Have Your Automotive Ad Agency Take This First Step

September 2nd, 2010 -

There’s no doubt the anchor to a successful social media plan starts with a dealer blog.

Use this video blog to ensure you begin with the right platform.

If your automotive ad agency isn’t getting you ahead of the social media wave give me a call. I promise I’ll get you pointed in the right direction.

Tell Your Automotive Ad Agency To Add Email Marketing To Social Media

April 12th, 2010 -

If your looking for a marketing idea where 1 + 1 = 3… Look no further!

Is Social Media a threat to email marketing. Absolutely not!

Don’t get pushed into thinking email and social media are not compatible. The truth is social media is going to make email marketing more effective.

“Even though people are spending more time using social media, they are not abandoning e-mail,” said Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, “Maximizing the E-Mail/Social Media Connection.” “The two channels can help each other, offering the opportunity for marketers to create deeper connections.”

While most dealers are looking for ways to engage in social media the dealers who are ahead of the curve are quickly realizing the impact it can have with email marketing.

The ability to use your social content and direct to your already prolific email lists is a huge opportunity. For years dealers have wondered how often they should connect with the customer list. Generally dealers settle for once a quarter simply because the time and energy it takes to put together a newsletter.

Your blog however should have all the content you’ll ever need for a newsletter. So if you’re ready to have them work together lets get started.

Here’s all you need to do get you newsletter out at least once a month.

Go to ConstantContact and open an account.
Load your email data base. You may want one for customers and one for prospects.
Build a template for your newsletter and use your blog head as the header. Don’t make it a dealership newsletter but a blog newsletter.
Don’t get fancy. Make sure the reader can see three headlines when the open the email. Only put two or three lines of blog underneath the headline.
Have read more button that takes them to the complete article on you blog.
Keep the sales side out as much as you can. We are suppling relevant value oriented content to our owner base.
If you must sell make it short and about service.

Use your blog data to see which blogs are being read the most. Select these for your newsletter.

This is just one simple way to integrate email and social media.

It really should be the first step you and your automotive ad agency take.

Don’t ever think email marketing or social media are one dimensional. Put your marketing hat on and your sure to come up with many more.

The Golden Goose of Automotive Advertising Is In Your Lap!

February 23rd, 2010 -

Don’t kill the golden goose!

I’ve been amazed at how poorly most dealerships are using facebook. The common negative car dealerships have in the general public is pressure.

Always pressuring for the immediate sell.

Even with years of data and a real effort by many dealers the perception still has not changed. When you just mention car dealerships people can feel the retail pressure. Nothing is more retail in the consumers mind than the car business.

So the one big opportunity to change this falls into our laps and we mess it up!

I’m talking about social media. This amazing opportunity drops right in our laps and what do most dealers instinctively do… START SELLING!

I’ve been doing some research on the best use of facebook by dealers to share with you. Posts that create real value and don’t insult customers with retail, retail and more retail. Unfortunately what I found were dealers across America posting deals and inventory on facebook like it’s a classified section or Craigs List.

You need to lose the retail virus when it come to Social Media. Social Media is a gift. Accept it! Don’t throw it away. Social Media has given you the opportunity to really build a community. To create trust and karma with your customers.

It’s your chance to provide real value to your market place. Make sure your posts pass one of these three smell tests before you post: Is it….

Entertaining
Educational
Informative

If it doesn’t then don’t post it. Set some standards with your automotive ad agency. Create some social objectives. You have plenty of other sources to get your retail message out. Don’t think there’s a quick fix and fall for one of the vendors offers in the market place. If it looks retail and it smells retail the consumer will know it.

Don’t kill the golden goose.

What’s The Buzz At Automotive Ad Agencies?

February 16th, 2010 -

There’s a buzz in the air and it’s not Buzz Lightyear.

What’s the buzz about?

Digital!

Questions abound beginning with what does an integrated digital plan look like and how much should I spend.

It’s become very clear if dealers want to connect with the ever increasing digital customer you’re going to need to spend more in this arena.

That’s the advice of Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP.

”Don’t just do digital because you can,” he said. “You must do it because it is integrated. As a dealer you have to use digital to augment the sales process.” Sorrell said he is seeing signs that automotive brands are increasing their online marketing budgets this year.

He said WPP’s research shows 93 percent of prospective buyers compare vehicles online before taking a car for a test drive, using third-party and automaker Web sites. But dealers only spend 2 percent of their ad budgets on Internet display ads.

We are in a business environment that operates 24/7. You have to expand your thinking as it relates to digital marketing. The future of digital involves mobile applications, social media, social forums and integrated media.

Research says only one in five consumers start their search for a car at a dealers website. To gain market share you’re going to have to connect with these customers before your competitors. Most dealers can do mass media in their sleep. It’s the dealer who integrates it with digital who is going to dominate.

When you see how all the pieces integrate it’s very exciting.

The dealership blog ties to twitter and facebook. Key search terms from your blog increase the ranking of your website.
You build a powerful social network that has far extending fingers into the market place.
SEO program drives your website, blog, facebook and twitter pages toward page one of selected key words.
Specials on your website tie to your mass media. Mass media push traffic to your website.
Targeted banner ads connect with in market shoppers and drive them to special landing pages.
Text messages promote these special events.
Cross promotions with local media outlets get very creative. Everything touches everything.

Don’t hide from this new world. Get in the game. Get your automotive ad agency to recommend your next step. Market share is up for grabs. Up your digital spending with a well thought out plan and just watch as your market share grows and grows.

i-Phone’s Can Drive Dealership Traffic, I Think!

January 15th, 2010 -

Up-Your-Ups is getting an i-phone app!

What does it mean? Well I’m not sure!

I know what it is intended to do but what I have found once I begin to use social tools my brain goes into overdrive. I start thinking about how it could work for a dealership. How it could work for our agency.

Bottom line I have found this to be true with all the social media tools. The intent or design of the tool is obvious but the true end use will depend on your business and your strategy.

That’s why it is so important if you want to drive dealership traffic with social media you connect with people who know your business.

There must over a thousand tools one could try. The phone app world has just exploded. I tell our social staff if we stop learning for just a couple of days we’ve gone backwards.

Not just in the use of social media tools, but the strategy and the creative ideas of how our clients can use them. So my advise is this. Try a tool even though you’re not sure if it will help or not. Once you’re engaged with it your creative mind should start filling your brain with possibilities. If it doesn’t, don’t waste any more time with it.

Look for our i-phone app coming soon. I know what it can do right now but when I realize what it can do for you and me in the pursuit of driving dealership traffic I’ll let you know.

If you’re ahead of me let me know what your experiences are with i-phone apps to drive dealership traffic. I can always use some help.

Four Social Media Secrets For Driving Dealership Traffic

January 8th, 2010 -

It’s time to get on target with Social Media. Here are four Secrets to get you started and engaged.

1. Social Media is Affordable but Not Cheap

If you’ve looked into Social Media you may have found the tools available overwhelming. There is not a shortage of tools and the good news is most are free or cost very little and really can help your dealership or automotive ad agency. For instance along with the microblogsite Twitter, there are over 100 free tools that enhance its use. If you think Social media is affordable your right but it isn’t cheap it’s extremely time intensive. Especially the time needed for you and your staff to get up to speed. It is my experience that turn key programs are a better fit for dealerships. If you’re starting from ground zero consider getting help. Remember, the cost of not getting started in Social Media will be very expensive.

“The cost of your social media education is going to be great but if you don’t invest in your education now it will be costlier later.”

2. Don’t Get Faked Out! Knowledge and Experience can’t be faked.

Have you ever fallen into a trap by your automotive ad agency or staff telling you, “sure we can do that” when at the time they didn’t have a clue, but , they thought they could figure it out. You cant’ fake Social Media. To be successful in social media you wont be able to fake it. The best test is to see if your automotive ad agency or staff have done it for themselves. If they haven’t you have to ask do they understand it or really believe in it. Michael Gass a social expert give some great advise ”If I were a prospective client the first place I would check to see if an agency truly understood social would be to check out their agency blog. I would be able to determine quickly if you are walking the walk or just talking the talk.”

Eric Kintz, a Hewlett-Packard marketing exec and blogger said: “I think they [agencies] are somewhat helping. But they need to show how social media has helped them further their own agenda. So if an ad agency comes to me, I’d ask if they have their own page on a social network site? Are they posting videos on YouTube? Do they have their own blog? And how has it helped them in their own business?”

3. Motive Matters

Advertisers and their ad agencies are looking at social media, the first mass marketing media that isn’t supported by advertising and wondering, what is in it for me? How do I make money through social media?

Radio, TV, your newspaper exists because of advertising. It exists to please the advertisers.

Seth Godin’s blog is ranked number one marketing blog by AdAge Power150. In a recent post he points out,

“The net wasn’t invented by business people and doesn’t exist to help your company (agency) make money. It is entirely possible it could be used that way but it doesn’t owe you anything. The question to ask isn’t how does this help me?” The question to ask isn’t, “but how does this help me? The question to ask is, “how are people (the people I need to reach, interact with and tell stories to) going to use this new power and how can I help them achieve their goals?”

4. Learn to Listen and Observe.

From my listening are learning let me give you a little secret. People read differently online than they do print. They tend to scan rather than read word-for-word. Plus you need to begin a conversation you need to lead with “benefits” to the consumer to read your blog . There are many other things that you will only “get” as you become involved in this space that’s what makes it so exciting and a great opportunity for you.

Barbara Bacci Mirque, executive vice president of the Association of National Advertisers, ANA, recently observed that,

“More and more advertisers are leading their agencies into new media, not the other way around,” and that ”clients are the ones who are personally and professionally experimenting with new media forms and directing their agencies to look into them.”

“When I started out in this business in the mid 80’s as an assistant product manager at The Frito-Lay Company, we expected our advertising agencies to be innovative and inform us about what was hip and cool – now it appears to be the other way around,” she wrote in the ANA blog.

What is Ron Wheeler’s motivation?

I’m a participant because I’m a believer! I have to understand emerging media and the changes occurring in the advertising industry through new communication technology for my own professional survival. We are in revolution that is as big as television was to the advertisers. The growth Social Media is blowing by the growth of any media in our history.

It’s not too late to get started and get a significant competitive advantage. My informal research of dealership attempts at social media indicates they are traveling down the wrong path. There’s a desire but no clear direction how to really execute.

There are many additional resources within my blog that will be of help. If you have questions, please feel free to email them to me.

Ron, Wheeler, Founder/CEO, Wheeler Advertising, Tel-Edge, and the Wright Edge Advertising.

The Integration of today's marketing channels is the single most important task you have as a retail marketer. This blog is designed to assist you in discovering ways to integrate traditional, digital and social media into a dynamic free flowing marketing program. Up Your Ups is "An Integration Think Tank" and we look forward to your interaction with us.

If you have questions or if you have suggestions on how I can improve this site, please don't hesitate to email them to me at rwheeler@wheeleradvertising.com

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