Automotive Marketing | Automotive SEO | CliqScout Search Marketing

Why social media marketing for auto dealers?

Many dealers remain distant from adding social media marketing into the overall brand marketing strategy. These dealers mainly fall into two groups, those who think social media is a passing fad, and those who don’t even know where to begin. The Internet savvy dealers are fully engaging in social media marketing as an incremental strategy to build their business.   As an alternative to traditional advertising, social media is uniquely valuable to auto dealers.

Social Media Marketing is definitely not a fad.

There’s quite a bit of data that clearly shows the fantastic growth of this new communication medium. Compare these growth rates to reach 50 million users:

• Radio – 38 years
• TV – 13 years
• Internet – 4 years
• iPod – 3 years
• Facebook had 100 million users in just 9 months!

Social media is a unique venue to build a measure of trust between your dealership and customers. No longer restricted to the larger companies with vast budgets, social media is much more about brand strategy and the proper use of engagement than grandiose budgets. Social media marketing for auto dealers is a terrific tool to strengthen existing relationships with customers, while strategically building your online presence as well as generating traffic and leads. The key to success is in your messaging, if you are only out pitching “the deal of the day”, you’re not really listening. Many new car shoppers demand a more engaging shopping experience when it comes to researching new and used vehicles. These same new car buyers want to review other customer purchase experiences when determining the best dealer to do business with, and social media marketing can have an immense impact on your online reputation. Just like in real life, first impressions online are important too!

Not convinced that your dealership should integrate social media into your overall marketing strategy?

Here are a few more eye opening things to consider:

• Social networking sites have overtaken porn as the Internet’s #1 activity.
• Twitter has seen an increase of almost 1500% over the last year.
• 2 out of 3 people on the PLANET visit social networks.
• Time spent on social networks is growing at three times the overall Internet rate.
• 100 Million YouTube videos are watched every day and every minute 20 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube.
• More than 5 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day and more than 1.5 million pieces of content are shared on Facebook daily.
• If Facebook were a country, it would be the eighth most populated in the world, just ahead of Japan, Russia and Nigeria.
• If YouTube were a country, it would be the third most-populated place in the world.
• 7.8 billion tweets and counting.
• 68% of Internet users have used social networks, while only 65.1% have used email.

These are some of the social media statistics that astonish many people. So don’t wait for the fad to pass, set up some online profiles in your favorite social networking application.  Many of the top social media sites are becoming their vertical portals recognized by the search engines. Most of the search engines even show relevant social media results within the search results page.  If that isn’t convincing enough to get started, then what will move you to take action today?

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