Nearly every cus­tomer ser­vice evan­ge­list preaches the value of blog­ging.  You see oth­ers blog­ging about their busi­ness and gen­er­at­ing leads. So what’s stop­ping you?

The #1 excuse deal­ers and their staff say is, “We don’t know what to write about.” Of course not, this is all new and writ­ing witty con­tent has never been in the job descrip­tions of any deal­er­ship personnel.

You have, at your fin­ger­tips, a gold mine. An untapped reser­voir of not only out­stand­ing sto­ries and con­tent but peo­ple to do it for you!  It’s your own employ­ees. Almost no deal­er­ship has a short­age of raw mate­r­ial for blogs. It’s chan­nel­ing the mate­r­ial that’s the hurdle.

For auto­mo­tive Social Media mar­ket­ing to reach its full poten­tial, there are suc­cess fac­tors (in this order) that must be present:

• Chang­ing cul­ture is hard work.  This shift began with the cus­tomer and we must adapt. Some of your sales­peo­ple will love the idea of cre­at­ing con­tent and you’ll get major push-back from oth­ers. Many will say, “I can’t write.” but writ­ing is actu­ally just writ­ing down what’s in your head. Start with cus­tomer FAQs–each one is a blog post.

• Help your peo­ple remain aware of con­tent oppor­tu­ni­ties. Sto­ries hap­pen on the front lines where the cus­tomers are–in your show­room and ser­vice drive. Edu­ca­tion and train­ing are in inte­gral part of cre­at­ing aware­ness. Knowl­edge helps your peo­ple rec­og­nize an oppor­tu­nity and not be afraid to use the tools to pub­lish it.

• Cap­ture con­tent in their for­mat of choice. Make it easy for your peo­ple to be inspired. Some pre­fer writ­ing, some pre­fer video.  Some might just want to write you a long email. Along the way, they’ll get accus­tomed to search­ing for con­tent and with so many of them doing it, your blog will soon be gen­er­at­ing traf­fic and leads in ways you never imagined.

Your Turn: What’s pre­vent­ing you from shift­ing to this “all in” cul­ture and get­ting more par­tic­i­pa­tion and results from employees?

Kathi Kruse is an Auto­mo­tive Social Media Expert, Blog­ger, Author, Speaker and Founder of Kruse Con­trol Inc. Reach out to Kathi through her con­tact page or by call­ing 714–251-6440.

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Auto­mo­tive jour­nal­ists invited to the offi­cial launch of the Mazda CX-5 recently were in for a jolt – done in a rural loca­tion where the com­pany treated its audi­ence to rugged land­scape of High­land Scot­land, dot­ted with fake road signs like ‘next charg­ing point 225 miles away’ – all intended to make fun of elec­tric cars (which Mazda doesn’t have) and the inevitable range anx­i­ety. Was this necessary?

The Toy­ota Pixis Epoch, a micro-vehicle for the home mar­ket of Japan, and the Volk­swa­gen Sha­ran NEF, a com­pact emer­gency vehi­cle based on the Sha­ran mini­van, indi­cate the will­ing­ness of major automak­ers that once shied away from pro­duc­ing any­thing but global vehi­cles to ven­ture into niche vehi­cles designed for a spe­cific mar­ket. Not intended for the U.S. mar­ket, and wisely so – Amer­i­cans seek a more functionality.

A gov­ern­ment study, based on crash data cov­er­ing a three-year period from 2005 to 2007, prompted the warn­ing that “tire prob­lems are inher­ently haz­ardous to vehi­cle safety.” Specif­i­cally, under­in­flated tires pose an espe­cially high risk of caus­ing a prob­lem, says the agency. Recent laws man­dated all vehi­cles be equipped with tire-pressure mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems (TPMS) but false alerts have caused motorists to ignore the warn­ing. Bot­tom line: check those tires!

If that’s the case, it would be “smart” to check out United Road’s Dealer Link — CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL DOCUMENT!

Stream­line your online mar­ket­ing, enhanc­ing your web­site by mak­ing it a “one stop shop” where users can buy and ship a car in one easy step.

Min­i­miz­ing the need for cus­tomers to go else­where for ser­vices helps improve reten­tion and close rates.

Avail­able bundling of ser­vices and poten­tially financ­ing to pro­vide a sin­gle one cost solu­tion to the customer.

As the Nations largest auto­mo­tive logis­tics provider we bring cred­i­bil­ity and rep­u­ta­tion to your ship­ping ser­vice offering.

With addi­tional cross-marketing oppor­tu­ni­ties we pro­vide even more incen­tive for your cus­tomers to visit your web­site and ulti­mately pur­chase from you!

How Does it Work?

• United Road IT pro­vides the html code to insert in your web site – you just have your IT team copy and paste it in!
• The link will launch our quote engine and pro­vide your cus­tomer with ship­ping options as well as the abil­ity to place the order directly on line!
• No invest­ment on the deal­er­ships part to get started in the part­ner­ship with us.
• Con­tribute a pre­de­ter­mined per­cent­age of our over­all profit directly back into the deal­er­ship or pass­ing along sav­ings to your customers.
• Optional client brand­ing avail­able to dealers.
• Stream­lined billing and con­sol­i­dated invoic­ing avail­able – or your cus­tomer pays direct.

And MORE! There are sev­eral addi­tional options for inte­gra­tion depend­ing upon your require­ments and marketing/sales strategy.

Across the city or across the coun­try, United Road is dri­ven to deliver! Call us at 734.947.7900.

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